Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump on Tuesday called for congressional term limits during a swing out west, part of an effort to push a raw outsider message in the closing weeks of the US presidential campaign.
In a speech that aides had hoped would focus his populist, anti-Washington appeal — to “drain the swamp” of the nation’s capital, a phrase Trump repeated several times — he turned only cursorily to what was supposed to be the day’s new policy proposal.
“The time for congressional term limits has finally arrived,” Trump said, after promising to push for a constitutional amendment to impose term limits on congressional lawmakers. “Not only will it end our government corruption, but we will end the economic stagnation that we are in right now.”
At a second rally in Colorado, Trump added specificity, saying he would limit US House of Representatives lawmakers to three terms, or six years, and US senators to two terms, or 12 years.
In his speech in Colorado Springs, a solidly Republican city, Trump did not respond to US President Barack Obama’s taunt earlier in the day that he “stop whining” about a “rigged” election and instead focus on making his case to voters.
However, he also did not exactly heed Obama’s advice to stop complaining, instead lamenting again what he called the rigged news media, disavowing the polls that have recently showed him slipping further behind Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton in Colorado and other battleground states, and mocking his rival’s health.
“As WikiLeaks proved, the media really is just an extension of the Clinton campaign,” Trump said as the crowd booed. “The press has created a rigged system and poisoned the minds of so many of our voters. They have rigged it from the beginning by telling totally false stories, most recently about phony allegations, where I have been under constant attack.”
Trump once again returned to his unsubstantiated claims of an election “stolen” through voter fraud, singling out, with no evidence, black communities as the likely culprits.
“Voter fraud is all too common, and then they criticize us for saying that,” he said. “But take a look at Philadelphia, what’s been going on. Take a look at Chicago. Take a look at St Louis. Take a look at some of these cities, where you see things happening that are horrendous.”
“And if you talk about it, they say bad things about you, they call you a racist,” he added.
In Grand Junction, Colorado, Trump was more explicit, saying he expected his supporters to engage in poll watching, a practice that Democrats and Republicans have worried could amount to voter intimidation.
After briefly pulling about even with Clinton here at the end of last month, Trump has fallen in the polls in Colorado; he trails Clinton by 11 points in the state in a new head-to-head Quinnipiac University poll, and the Real Clear Politics polling average on Tuesday showed her leading Trump by eight points in the state, 46 percent to 38 percent.
Seeming to acknowledge his increasingly challenging political reality, Trump — who once frequently cited favorable polls to his crowds — sounded a sour note.
“Even though we’re doing pretty well in the polls, I don’t believe the polls anymore, I don’t believe them,” he said. “Believe me, folks, we’re doing great.”
After controversies over his treatment of women, Trump and his aides have all but abandoned trying to win over undecided or independent voters.
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